Video: Student Loans Are Like STDs (Everyone Is Catching Them)

Student loan debt is the next big economic sledgehammer that’s about to come down on this country…the next big bubble to burst following the housing bubble.

Consider this. Student loan debt is somewhere upwards of $1.3 Trillion in this country these days — and that’s just the official government loans, not private lenders, etc. The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that’s going to double in the next decade as tuition rises and more people go back and get even more loans, going to grad school in the hope that if they take on even more debt and get another degree, maybe they’ll finally be able to get that magical job where they can afford to live to be debt free one day to match it… a condition known these days as “American Dream Syndrome.”

Yes, the American Dream used to be about owning a nice car and a house with the 2.5 kids and the dog and the picket fence, but these days? Screw that, today’s American Dream just involves people wanting to be able to live in a world where they can breathe a free breath, a world without crushing debt affecting every life decision they make on a daily basis, a place where they won’t have to decide between paying the rent and buying food. 

“You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious.” ~ Eric Garland

The generation Xers have on average less than half the wealth their parents had and about six times the debt mostly thanks to college loans, and generation Y, or the millenials who came in behind them, are even more screwed and debt-burdened than their predecessors. No one is getting married or buying houses or new cars because everyone is too busy struggling just to make ends meet so they can buy luxuries like food and pay the rent on their crappy apartment (or, worse, they are forced to remain living with their parents for years because they can’t even afford the crappy apartment, roommate-style). The values overall haven’t actually changed…the ability to afford them has.

Both generations exist in a society where they are expected to work for next to nothing or have nothing period, yet they are always cast as a bunch of self-entitled whiners from generations before who start sentences with, “Back in my day…” Yeah, exactly. Things were a lot different in your day. A gallon of milk didn’t cost $4, first of all.

Then again, pointing fingers (and figures) at each other is probably a lot easier than dealing with the reality that most all of us have been financially screwed at this point in equal measure (unless you’re in the 0.0001% which just keeps gaining insane wealth like a cancer). The middle class is being systematically stamped out, more and more jobs are being shipped overseas or eliminated entirely, and opportunity in our society has become one big collapsing bubble itself. With a workforce where there are so many more college degrees than real jobs available, it’s a joke. It’s the very situation that breeds the attitudes that feed a welfare state, so those Cloward-Piven strategists have been licking their lips for a while now.

Again, it’s that American Dream that’s called a dream because you have to be asleep to believe it…

The video below is dedicated to all the Gen Xers and millenials out there who dream of an adult life without debt — debt they took on because they dreamed of a life period — and even dare to conceive of a steady paying job for that STEM degree they took out so many college loans and worked so hard to get that isn’t working part-time as a server at Olive Garden. (Oh wait, Olive Garden’s parent company Darden has been laying off lots of people too, never mind.)

Everybody needs a good laugh right about now…

(PS – Meanwhile the top 1 percent of earners in America has seen their income quadruple since 1979, and the wealth gap continues to widen to record shattering levels…)